As an adult, I often find myself frustrated with my kids when they develop a one track mind. They’ll talk about Minecraft or some other game for the hundredth time one morning and I will feel my teeth clench and my blood boil. I would like nothing more than to take the iPad and drop kick it into the 8 foot snow drifts in the backyard. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to hear about Plants Vs Zombies 2 again until the spring.

How quickly I forget! It’s so easy to lose perspective as to what I was like as a kid, or even as an adult. Maybe I can control it a little better now – at least realizing that very few people in the real world actually want to hear about horror/exploitation movies nonstop, but it doesn’t really change the fact that they are on my mind pretty much all of the time. These pages detail a few instances where a particular movie was on my mind to the point of distraction. There are a host of reasons that a movie might jump from the want to see pile to the need to see pile. The only common factor in all of them is that my initial attempts to see them were all denied. Maybe some people can resist the forbidden fruit, but those people have stronger constitution than I do.

In this case, it started with a release I wasn’t anticipating wanting to see. In fact, I don’t even remember if I knew it was coming out. I was browsing through Blockbuster Video (a store I resisted for a long time) with a friend when when the hologram cover caught our attention. We immediately picked it up and had a chuckle at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole scenario.

This is still the better of the two images.

Of course, this was before the time when SyFy streamlined absurdity so much with stuff like Sharknado that it’s not even fun anymore. It seems like the mainstream has taken this stuff from fans of camp, but sort of missed the point in the process.

We decided that the idea of a killer snowman warranted a rental but, unfortunately, it was out. We went and asked the clerk when it was due back and he told us it was due back before midnight but there were already two guys waiting in their car for the movie. This must have been 8 pm or so the day before Thanksgiving and these guys were actually waiting in their car for Jack Frost! Were they going to wait for four hours and run the risk that it wouldn’t be returned? It’s a good thing Blockbuster didn’t give out information as to who rented what or this guy (girl?) would have had a mob at his house.

This whole scenario elevated Jack Frost to a must see movie. I wasn’t alone on this one either. When this particular friend and I get together and want a movie, we usually find it. That’s what made this whole experience all the more frustrating. We canvased close to half a dozen video stores across two cities. We would have expanded our search even further if we had started earlier.

We asked every clerk if it was due back that night. Some had never heard of the movie and some told us that it wasn’t due back until after the holiday. The fact was, there was absolutely no way of getting our hands on Jack Frost that night. And considering that just about everything was closed on Thanksgiving, it was going to be a while.

We did finally get a hold of the movie within a week or so. It was one of the happy endings where the movie didn’t disappoint after we built it up so much. It worked mostly because of how delightful the snowman looks when he’s driving a car or sexually assaulting a girl in the bath tub. The cast took it just seriously enough to sustain it. Nothing is ever all that funny when the people telling the joke are terrified that someone’s not going to get it.

Looking back, we obviously weren’t the only people grabbed by the cover. It was enough of a hit that hologram covers seemed to become a thing for a little while with similar releases for Jack Frost 2 and Uncle Sam.

It’s been nearly 20 years since our quest for Jack Frost. Honestly, I remember more about our failed attempts to rent the movie than I do about the film itself. It’s okay though. The movie is something I like, but the journey to find it is something that I love.

4 Responses to Jack Frost – Hologram Cover

This looks like an entertaining romp. I noticed there was another Jack Frost film with Michael Keaton possessing a snowman made in the nineties! Could we call it a mini-genre then? Yes, I know well the feeling of being thwarted and locating a film turning into a single minded mission …

I remember when that Michael Keaton movie came out. I was thinking that the smaller movie wouldn’t have been able to use the title. Still, it would have been nice to see a small video store section for movies about people who get their souls trapped in snowmen, all titled Jack Frost.

I have a feeling that I would have mostly forgotten about this one if renting it wasn’t such an ordeal.